


i'm coming home, i'm coming home

by Murf1307



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Character Study, Fix-It, Gen, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-22
Updated: 2015-03-22
Packaged: 2018-03-19 00:56:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3590265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Murf1307/pseuds/Murf1307
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Armando Muñoz, right before and after his death and resurrection.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'm coming home, i'm coming home

**Author's Note:**

> I might continue this someday, I don't know.

Darwin’s been saving people ever since he realized what he was.  It’s the easiest thing in the world, when you know nothing the world does to you can stick.    
  
He gets in the middle of gunfights and knife-fights and learns _how_  to fight, so that soon they can’t even tell he’s got this _thing_  about him, the way his skin won’t break and his blood doesn’t spill.  By his own count, he should’ve died about fifty times when Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr pile into his cab when he’s twenty-two and let him know he’s not the only one.  
  
It’s a good feeling.  Better when he sees that by _not alone_  they meant there are real faces, real people with purposes and goals and lives of their own.  
  
There’s Angel, who rolls her eyes at his name when he tells her, and then they talk in nothing but Spanish for three hours.    
  
There’s Raven, who smiles and acts like it’s no big thing to shake his hand.  He’s got no idea what she can do until her hand shifts colors, matching the color of his skin, just up to the wrist.  That’s when he smiles back at her.  
  
There’s Hank, who doesn’t say much and seems unsettled but all the commotion.  A smart kid, maybe only a little younger than him and Raven.  
  
There’s Sean, who doesn’t say much either.  He offers Darwin a joint and raises his eyebrow when Darwin tells him he can’t get high.  “Too bad, man,” he says.  “Take a drag anyway.”  
  
And then, of course, there’s Alex.  Alex, who shakes his hand and seems to get, more than the others (except Angel) that the world can be cruel and hard in ways that can be hard to imagine.  Alex has prison in his eyes, and Darwin knows that look too damn well.  
  
Darwin likes all of them, well enough, and more than once Xavier and Lehnsherr have drifted off to do their own thing and everyone’s starting to admit to what they are.  
  
And oh, god, it becomes very, very clear that Alex knows the hard world, the dangerous world, because his power flares out and burns in pretty chaos, like hula hoops of fire.  Alex is danger all wrapped up in a broad-shouldered, blue-eyed, All-American package, his leather jacket a new acquisition, like he just saw _Streetcar Named Desire_  or _Rebel Without a Cause_.  
  
Darwin might like him best.  
  
At the very least, Alex makes him curious in a way the others don’t always.  Sure, Angel’s always got something good to say, and they’ve got a rapport of their own, surrounded by all these white people, but Alex makes him want to dig deeper.  Angel’s easy to read, but Alex isn’t.  
  
It’s not until he starts drifting closer that he realizes that Alex might be like him in more ways than one.  Alex seems trapped under all that leather and that affectation of a Marlon Brando smile, and Darwin’s seen plenty of men and boys climb into his backseat wearing eyes like that, destinations to the Village or the nearest by-the-hour motel.  
  
There’s a well of gravity, too, that draws Darwin in closer, like Alex is aching for something he hasn’t had in a long damn time.  It feels familiar, and there’s an answering little ache behind Darwin’s breastbone too.  
  
“You ever play pinball before, hotshot?” he asks one night.   _Hotshot_  is what he’s taken to calling him, even though the others all think if they have code names, they should be things like _Havok_  and _Banshee_  and _Mystique_  — Darwin calls Alex Summers _hotshot_  because he’s something a little different.  He’s pretending at something, and Darwin is starting to figure out what it is.  
  
“Yeah.  Had a lot of free time,” Alex said, and he’s being honest, not sarcastic.  Darwin appreciates that, he really does.  
  
Darwin hmns a little bit, draws out the moment.  “Wanna play?”  
  
“Sure,” Alex says, nodding.  There’s a little frisson of understanding in him, too, and that only can make Darwin more curious.  
  
They move to the machine.  They play.  
  
The rest, well, the rest is committed to history, plasma, and dust.  


* * *

  
The thing about history, though, is that it’s alive.  It’s absurdly alive, and this is no different.  What was true, suddenly isn’t.  
  
And that works both ways: it kills Darwin, sure, but it brings him back, too.    
  
He opens his eyes and he’s surrounded by rubble.  Grass is growing up through it, which means there hasn’t been nobody here for a long damn time.  But it’s the compound, it’s Quantico, and Darwin wonders when it is now that he’s come back.  
  
He gets to his feet and it hurts, sure, because he hasn’t moved in God only knows how long.  He figures he’s got an excuse — he was _dead_ , after all.  
  
A gas station a few lonely miles up the road lets him know the date, and carefully, he manages to construct enough of a story — he’s been hit on the head pretty bad and doesn’t remember anything past the summer of ’62.  Now, it’s ’64, March 13th, and the big story in all the papers stops him in his tracks.    
  
_Presidential Assassination Trial Raises More Questions Than Answers_.  
  
_‘I’m a Mutant’ Testifies JFK Defendant._  
  
_He Calls Himself Magneto: A Profile of the Man Who Shot Kennedy._  
  
It rocks him to his core, and he wonders what the hell happened between July 2nd, 1962 and today.  
  
Xavier might have answers, if he’s still alive, so Darwin decides that he’ll try and find the man — Xavier can’t be all that common a last name, and the man had seemed like he came from a hell of a lot of money, after all.  
  
The search isn’t so hard, given that there’s an Xavier-Marko family estate up in Salem Center, Westchester.  
  
The house is bustling with life when he shows up, a sign on the front gate proclaiming the _Xavier Institute for Gifted Youngsters_  is what he he’s looking at.  
  
He can hear laughter, and a joyful, laughing little girl bowls into his legs almost as soon as he steps foot inside the grounds.  He looks down at her, smiles — she’s got pointed ears and red, shaggy fur — and she grins up at him with two rows of pointy little wolf teeth.  
  
“Rahne, Rahne, no howling at vi —“  
  
Alex’s voice cuts out as Darwin looks up to meet his stunned gaze.  
  
The little girl — Rahne, apparently — yips a little and clings to Darwin’s legs.  
  
“Hey,” he says, carefully pulling the little girl off of him.  She can’t be older than five, and she goes easily when Darwin lifts her.  “Sorry I’m late.”  
  
Alex manages not to freak out, which is good.  “Come inside,” he says, and there’s hardly even a tremble in his voice.  
  
Good.  Good.  Darwin’s gonna have to apologize, really, later, for leading him wrong that night, but for now, he seems all right, which is enough.  
  
He follows Alex inside, little Rahne nosing up against his cheek and neck like a puppy.    
  
Inside, Hank — who is also covered in fur now, _blue_  fur — and Xavier — who’s in a wheelchair now — welcome him a little more simply.  Xavier calls it a miracle, and Hank asks if they can run some tests.  
  
“Later, later,” Darwin reassures them.  “Let a guy get caught up first, yeah?’  
  
Angel’s dead.  Lehnsherr, obviously, is on trial for killing the president.  Raven’s in the wind.  Sean wanders in about halfway through the exposition and nearly walks into a door when he sees that Darwin’s back.  
  
“Holy — Darwin?” the kid says.  
  
“Yep,” Darwin says, grinning.    
  
“That’s good, that’s really good.”  Sean grins back, glancing meaningfully at Alex.  
  
Looks like he’s gonna have to talk to Alex a little more urgently, if other people have noticed that little sort of something, or if Alex’s grief had been noticeable to others, really.  
  
Tonight, then.  


* * *

  
"You wanna talk to me," Alex murmurs that night, out in the back garden.  He's still wearing that damn leather jacket, but Darwin gets the feeling he doesn't smile much anymore, not even just to recall Brando.  
  
Darwin nods.  "I do," he agrees.  "I think we probably should talk."  
  
Alex's hands are in his pockets but Darwin wants to touch them anyway.  He doesn't try, though, and a moment passes where neither of them says anything.  
  
"I'm sorry," they both say at once, after that beat of silence.  
  
It surprises Alex into laughing, and Darwin chuckles a little, too.  "Wasn't your fault, hotshot."  
  
"What do you mean?"  Alex is cautious, suddenly, a little tense.  "It was my plasma he shoved down your throat."  
  
Darwin shakes his head.  "He stole it because of a flaw in _my_  plan.  The last couple years are on him first, for killing me, and me second, for coming up with the plan."  
  
Alex steps toward him.  "I listened, though.  I fired."  
  
"Because you put your trust in me.  In my mutation.”  Darwin steps forward, too.  “I’m sorry it didn’t work.  It should’ve.”  
  
“You didn’t know what Shaw could do,” Alex points out.    
  
Darwin nods.  “Yeah.  But it seems like it must’ve…been rough on you.”  
  
They’d been close, sort of, before Shaw killed him.  Darwin had had his hopes, and he isn’t sure if he should still have them, given the circumstances.  
  
“It was,” Alex admits.  “Nightmares.”  
  
Darwin takes another step forward.  “Sorry,” he apologizes again.  
  
Alex shakes his head.  “When you showed up, I didn’t know what to think.  But Rahne, she’s got good instincts.  I think — I think that convinced me you were real, I don’t know.”  
  
“I’m real, hotshot,” Darwin murmurs, not sure what else he can say.  
  
It’s Alex who reaches for him, drawing a fingertip down his chest, down to where the center of the explosion had been.  “Yeah,” he says, and his voice is thick.  
  
“Think we can be friends again?”  It’s tentative, more tentative than Darwin would’ve liked, but it’s out there now, at least.  He wants friendship, at least, with Alex, though really there’s no ‘least’ about it.  “I like to think we were, before.”  
  
“I think so,” Alex says, nodding.  His hand flattens on Darwin’s chest, like that’s what he’s focused on.  
  
Darwin nods again.  “All right, then.  Friends.”  He skims his hand over Alex’s briefly.  
  
Alex nods, tentative.  “Friends.”  
  
Something still feels off, thrumming in the air between them.  Darwin can feel it, and when he meets Alex’s eyes, he knows he can feel it too — and hey, at least Darwin can still read him like he could before, that’s something to be glad about.  
  
Alex’s hand lingers for a moment longer, and then he takes it back, fingers curling loosely into his palm, not exactly a fist, not tight enough to be a fist, but Darwin’s eyes follow the movement anyway.  
  
“It’s good to have you back,” Alex says, apropos of nothing.  
  
“It’s good to _be_ back.”  Darwin smiles at him.  “Though somebody’s gonna have to catch me up on the finer points of the last year and a half.”  
  
Alex huffs a little laugh.  “Yeah, _somebody_ ,” he says, like he’s perfectly aware that that somebody is going to be him.  
  
Darwin’s smile widens.  He can definitely work with this. 


End file.
